Thank you, Lena, for suggesting this, because it's exactly what I was looking for. A good Gay SciFi Military/Adventure.

Many people have said this, and I will reiterate: a book is made on the strength of its characters. And Kyle Juenger is a strong, strong character. Suffering builds depth, and more than that, transcendence of suffering builds a hero. Voinov does both beautifully.

And the sex. This, dear readers, is how sex should be done - as part of the novel's plot, as part of the deepest truth that characters hold in them. Vindication, and release, and reluctance and helplessness and strength and an echo of the theme and motif.

Needless to say, this is one of the few - very few! - sex scenes I've ever read that I didn't skip.

Everything in the first 4/5ths of Incursion is pitch perfect. My problem, at the last star that I can't give, revolves around the end.

The resolution comes too close to the most tense, fraught and plot-edifying scene in the book. Kyle Juenger-the character we've followed with bated breath and respect from page 1-deserves better. The end, pacing/plot-wise, feels like the "calm before a storm", when the hero regroups and finds his balance with the new truths of his world, and then...the end.

If this was a series (or, more appropriately, a serial), it would get 5 stars, and I'd buy the next one. As it is, I'm missing a true denouement...

That said, as I and other readers sift through bullshit-writing and cliche plots and Ukes and Semes without any sense of their own identities, on Amazon and Smashwords and wattpad, reading Incursion feels like finding that Renoir in a rummage-sale. A little faded, and nobody's going to give you more than a 100k for it at Christie's, but damn if it isn't awesome.